Sandy Robertson hardly expected to be stranded in the Pacific, covered in thick black human excrement, turtle guts and seawater at just 12 years old.
None of the Robertsons, originally hailing from a rural dairy farm in North Staffordshire, thought they’d be left to fend for themselves in a tiny inflatable raft with little in the way of tools or provisions, fighting for 38 straight days against nature itself for survival hundred of miles from land in the middle of the Pacific, one of the most hostile environments on the planet.
They weren’t, however, an ordinary family.
For nearly a year-and-a-half, the Robertsons, often compared to the 1960 Walt Disney movie the Swiss Family Robinson, had been sailing across the world, catching currents and winds to make their way to tropical destinations that, not long before, they could’ve only dreamt of.
But one single moment on June 15 1972 saw their dream of living like pirates, free men and women who were held down by no laws except their own, turned into a nightmare of unyielding solitude and danger that pushed their bodies and minds to breaking point.
In a terrifying episode that turned their lives upside down, three killer whales viciously attacked their good ship Lucette off the Galapegos Islands, sinking the vessel and leaving them fearing they would be ‘eaten alive.
It set in motion one of the most extraordinary survival tales in living memory – an ordeal that involved living on the guts of marine creatures and drinking animal blood to stay alive – but it brought out an unedifying perseverance in the face of the impossible that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.
The intrepid young family, made up of Anne, then 18, Douglas, then 17, and twins Sandy and Neil, then 11, as well as their parents Dougal, a former sailor in the Merchant Navy who then became a farmer, and Lyn, a trained midwife, were a largely inexperienced crew, and they did little to prepare for the Herculean task that lay ahead of them, Sandy, now 64, told the Telegraph.
‘We had spent six months living on the boat in Falmouth, getting everything ready, and not once did Dad take us out round the bay for a gentle sail’, he said.
They spent the next 18 months struggling to learn the ropes of the Lucette, an aging 19-ton schooner that measures just 43-ft in length, while travelling from Falmouth to Lisbon, then down to Gran Canaria, before making their way across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean.
After losing Anne in the Caribbean to a man she had fall in love with, and picking up Robin, a young Welsh statistician who was backpacking across the world, onboard while moored in Panama, the family and their travelling companion had reached paradise by June 1 1972.
Landing on the Galapagos Islands, the remote archipelago so rich in flora and fauna that it was the source of inspiration for Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, the group spent roughly two weeks taking in the sights.
They then set off merrily, not knowing that the sand on the beaches would be the last bit of dry land they would step on for nearly six weeks.
Sandy said the family, having faced little to no problems while sailing for a long time, were feeling confident about the journey ahead of them to the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia.
‘Everyone’s spirits were high and we were looking forward to the journey ahead.’
Despite his age, he was given control of the helm, though was assisted by older brother Douglas.
In an instant, a thundering crash sent the crew of the Lucette flying.
Sandy, terrified that he had hit something, pivoted to the cockpit of the ship, and saw a wooden boat’s ultimate nightmare.
Three vicious orcas had made their way through the hull of the boat, which began sinking in an instant.
Suffering a gaping hole in the aft cabin, and one in the vessel’s toilet, horror set in as the family realised their ship, their home for the past year-and-a-half, was sinking.
Dougal ordered everyone to abandon ship, and started to free the gifted raft and the Ednamair, a10ft-long dinghy made of fibreglass, which he named the Ednamair, after his wife’s two sisters, Edna and Mary, that be bought while travelling with his family.
The family and Robin had just one minute to gather their things and make their way to the dinghy.
Sandy revealed he only picked up a single bag of red onions: ‘I stepped off the boat and rolled onto my back clutching them.’
The family had little more than small scraps of food and water, enough for a day’s worth of food for ten people.
Stringent rationing meant that the six people onboard were allowed at most a sip of water every hour and at least, a mouthful of water a day.
Food also dwindled quickly, and Sandy said he was forced to throw up small sweets and biscuits and re-eat them several times to make them last.
Douglas, Sandy’s older brother, told LadBible last year that he helped make his parents realise that they needed to be proactive if they wanted to survive.
‘I remember saying to my dad ‘We’ve got to hunt, not catch. These animals don’t want to give their lives away, they’ll fight to the very end. We have got to catch and hunt them and kill them if we’re going to eat them’,’ he said.
After catching their first turtle, they made sure to make use of every last bit of it.
‘Dad pumped the blood into a jar. He drank the first mouthful and then passed it round. If you were last to drink, the serum had separated and you had to put your finger in and whisk it around before you drank it,’ said Sandy.
‘We would also roll the eyeballs around our mouths for ages until the membrane dissolved and they popped. They tasted salty.’
They also used fat from the turtle’s body to keep themselves warm.
The small comforts brought by their quarry did little to abate the larger problems, however. At the bottom of the Ednamair, which was also where they slept, lay a sickening mix of human excrement, seawater and turtle offal, a potent combination that left them with boils across their skin.
Their apparently inevitable deaths were discussed in great detail. Douglas said he remembered several poignant discussions of suicide, even among the older members of the family-turned-crew.
‘I remember saying to my dad ‘I can’t go on. I’ve had enough. I’m ready to go’. My dad was a very hard man.
‘He said ‘Douglas, do not let your bright light go out. We need you to survive so the rest of us can survive’. I said to him ‘Dad, you can’t even let me die in peace’.’
But despite the overwhelming odds, the group did everything in their power not to succumb to the mental challenge of being stuck hundreds of miles away from anyone else.
They played I Spy, banning themselves from choosing anything outside the ragtag vessel as they only saw the sun, and sea and skies for miles on end.
They also talked for hours on end about what food they’d eat if they ever made it back to civilisation.
Lyn’s birthday was on July 4 that year, 20 days into their Sisyphean task of survival. After singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, the family ate a feast of fresh and dried turtle meat, dried Dorado and water.
Despite all the games they’d play and wishes they’d conjure up, the reality of their dire situation had not escaped them.
Constant exposure to harsh sunlight caused blisters to pop out of their already burned skin, which stung every single time the saltwater of the Pacific splashed their bodies.
Their threadbare clothes did little to protect them from the elements – the lashing of waves, the high temperatures of the middle of the day to the icy chills caused by being so close to water in the dead of night rapidly tore through anything fixes Lyn made with her sewing kit.
As a result, disease took hold of the crew quickly. Sandy suffered from pneumonia, while the rest were deeply dehydrated and undernourished.
Underfed, dehydrated and covered in human waste was how the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel called the Toka Maru II found them, 38 days after they were struck by the pod of killer whales.
Lighting a flare that managed to save from the wreck of the Lucette, they hailed their saviours, who picked them up in a sorry state.
‘I climbed up the ladder and saw Neil lying on the floor and I wondered what was wrong with him.
‘Then as I tried to stand up I collapsed too. Our ankles were so weak we couldn’t stand.’
‘We had basically just stepped off a floating abattoir. We were covered in boils, sores and excrement. The skin was peeling off our fingers. We had no idea we smelt.’
After getting onboard, Dougal spent several minutes trying to convince the Japanese sailors to bring the Ednamair onboard, which they agreed to do.
To this day, the legendary vessel sits in the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Cornwall.
Years before their existential struggle, Dougal and Lyn yearned for something more than scraping by on their farm.
Inspiration came as the family saw Sir Robin Knox-Johnson race across the world in a yacht to become the first person to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe
Within two years of watching the legendary sailor in action, the Robertsons had sold nearly all their earthly possessions to buy the Lucette.
Douglas admitted that the family only survived their 38 days adrift because of how much of the twins’ life was ahead of them.
‘The twins kept us honest,’ he said. ‘They hadn’t even started their lives. We had a reason to survive. It was to save their lives.
‘My mum and dad were in their late 40s. They had had their lives, you could say. I was a young man, I had just become a man, I didn’t want to lose my life.’
Sandy has since admitted that the toils he went through more than half a century ago still define him to this day.
He believes that no matter how complicated human life gets, the innate need for survival will always serve people well.
‘Everybody has an inner warrior. Man is a hunter. There is a drive within you to stay alive. My attitude is now do or die, get on with it.’